CMO.com by Adobe delivers marketing insights, expertise, and inspiration for and by marketing leadersâall aimed at helping CMOs and senior marketers lead their brands in this new digital world. To help marketers stay informed and save time, CMO.com features curated content from more than 150 leading sources, in addition to original content from thought leaders at Adobe and across the industry.

Adobe is the global leader in digital marketing and digital media solutions. To learn more about how Adobe helps marketers make, manage, measure, and monetize digital content across every channel and screen, visit:

Soccer fans are considered to be among the most passionate of sports fans—as in fanatics. Analysis from Adobe Digital Index (ADI) confirms that notion: The 2014 FIFA World Cup, which begins June 12, has already accumulated more than 19 million social mentions since June 2013.

Soccer fans around the world are voicing their excitement for the event, with the World Cup receiving more social mentions in the month leading up to it than either the Super Bowl or Sochi Olympics. In fact, based on this social buzz data it’s seeing, ADI predicts that, in terms of total mentions, the World Cup will be the most social sporting event ever.

ADI captured data through the Adobe Social listening tool, collecting buzz from blogs, Facebook, Google+, Reddit, Twitter, Dailymotion, Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr, VK, Disqus, Foursquare, Metacafe, Wordpress, and YouTube. The results are based on more than 69 million social mentions, across 230 countries and territories, talking about World Cup. (Note: Adobe is CMO.com’s parent company.)

So far, ADI reports, 90% of the world has already contributed to the World Cup conversation, which is more than the Olympics (84%) and the Super Bowl (78%). The majority of World Cup buzz is coming from the APAC region, which has contributed 48% of related conversations on social media. EMEA came in second, with 32%, and the Americas came in third, with 20%.

When looking at specific countries, Japan is talking most about the event via social channels, accounting for 37% of World Cup mentions. The U.K. is in second place, clocking in at 11%. Brazil (9%), Germany (8%), and the U.S. (8%) round out the top five.

To date, the conversations around World Cup have been mostly positive, according to ADI. Fifty-nine percent of the social buzz for World Cup relates to admiration, joy, or anticipation for the event—everything you’d expect from loyal “football” fans.

On the other hand, Brazilians aren’t exactly thrilled about their country spending $500 million to host the World Cup. ADI found that 42% of social buzz from Brazilians has expressed sadness, anger, or disgust.

World Cup players are getting a lot of buzz, as well. Unsurprisingly, Cristiano Ronaldo—who has 26.5 million followers on Twitter—is the most-mentioned player on the World Cup roster. He had more than 1.5 million mentions in May 2014 alone.

During the course of the World Cup, the ADI team will track broadcast viewing data of the event, sponsor/advertiser buzz lift, and, for the first time ever, in-stadium tweeting and Foursquare check-ins. Follow the ADI team on Twitter for updated World Cup stats and insights at @AdobeIndex.

“The World Cup is a global event, as you can see in the data,” said Joe Martin, an analyst at ADI. “This analysis shows the types of insights marketers can glean from social media. Companies can see where in the world people are talking about them and what they are saying.”

For another view of ADI's World Cup data, click on the following infographic (image will open in a new tab):

Receive email updates on the latest

Adobe Digital Index research.

Adobe Digital Index Updates

Please provide your name and email address below to receive alerts when new Adobe Digital Index research is released. These alerts will be specific to Adobe Digital Index, and your email will not be shared for any other purpose. If you'd also like to sign up for CMO.com newsletters, please visit here.

First Name

Last Name

E-Mail

Adobe Digital Index email alerts will also include a link to remove yourself from the list at any time.